One Day..

I will write a book.

Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Mohammed?

I want to know from anyone who reads my blog- how does one choose one religion for oneself, if one wants to?

On what basis do you evaluate a particular religion? Does it even make sense to 'evaluate' a religion, i.e. examine it using logic and reason, when belonging to a religion is completely dependent on not logic, but faith?

If you insist on examining it critically with logic, in an absolutely unbiased fashion, then you do not have faith. And if you do indeed have unequivocal faith, truly objective criticism is impossible. Consider a devout Catholic attempting an objective evaluation of Catholicism; it simply will not work. Equally applicable to all religions.

Here is the circular trap as I see it -

I've read over fifty accounts of islamic apostates, i.e. people who left Islam, and at least as many of people who've left Christianity, and most accounts of why they left their respective religions are logic-based. I'm finding it difficult to understand how a logical criticism of a religious text can be a valid criticism when religions simply ask you to have faith.

If you are sceptical of it in any way, (one way being attempting a critical evaluation of it) then how exactly do you have faith? And even if you go on to prove successfully, that the primary religious text of a particular religion is logically inconsistent (say it is full of anachronisms and self-contradictions), what exactly have you proved? Your criticism will not make any difference to the devout, for they have faith, and faith is not critical. Your criticism can only make a difference to the skeptics, which makes no difference, because by virtue of being skeptical, they do not have faith to begin with.

So when you have no faith, and yet you cannot criticise, how do you choose a religion?

Or do I have it on backwards, and does the religion choose you?

Regular commenters, please oblige, and lurkers, please make an exception and delurk, pretty please. :) I want as many opinions as I can get. Atheists, agnostics, everyone please come forward.

Thank you.

***

(No disrespect is meant by the title; the title stays as it is because it seems to sum up my problem perfectly.)

I am a Ninja, and you are Not.

Allow me to comment on the weather once more. It is in that blessed twilight moment between summer and winter, where summer seems to pause on its way out and look us straight in the eye, and we have caught that moment, captured it indefinitely in our skin and our eyes. Crisp and cold and so strangely clear in the mornings, with that large white winter sun that simply cannot heat, unexpectedly hot afternoons, where you pull off your sweatshirt, cursing (or if you are a Dilli-person, you point and laugh at the 'Saooth-Indian' who, poor her, is feeling cold already and it isn't even winter yet. Are you reading this, you Saddi-Dilli-type person? POO on you. One day you will call for me in a weak, shaky tenor that comes from chest catarrh, and extend a pale shaky arm to me for help and I will coldly watch and even more coldly laugh, and with infinite pleasure swat your pleading arm away. Ahahahahahaha. AHAHAHAHAHAHA.) and chilly nights, where you observe all the work that you have planned for the night, and then you observe all the warm, toasty blankets you have piled up on your bed, and the work does not stand a chance. And you climb into your bed and assume a foetal position and remain in said retarded position until four minutes before class.

I am the first to admit I spent the first winter here freezing my extremities off, drinking much shitty coffee and declaiming loudly to the world in general what a very large craphole University is, and what a much larger unwashed craphole a desert winter is. I never realised what a fan I am of warm, humid, rainy winters (think Madras, think Pondicherry, think Bombay!) until the Jodhpur winter snuck up and stuffed icecubes up all my orifices when I wasn't looking. And left them there for three months.

But, you know, I really like this winter now. I like the cold that brings tears to your eyes (literally), I like the fact that winter clothes beautifully camouflage any and all flab you have gathered eating rasagollas with with every meal. And of course, I like eating rasagollas with every meal.

What I DON'T like is having to hover sneakily in the freezing bathroom to fill my two buckets of hot water every morning before it runs out. HOT SHOWERS, DEAR GOD! By Methuselah, has nobody heard of MODERN PLUMBING?!

But this post has gone in a different direction than intended. No really. Sometimes I do come here with a specific intention in mind; of course, it usually happens that I end up doing happy backflips in an entirely different direction, and remember my original thought only when I am exhausted and flat on my back and dreaming of Honey Nut Crunch ice cream from Baskin Robbins, to satisfy the keening, growling sugar craving I have from doing backflips on the internetz.

Anyhow.

My original intention was to applaud the neat social structure that my University has developed. It appears to follow, unhappily, the standard format of every high-school American show I have ever watched. But it is still a nice, neat social structure. And by neat, I mean dependable also. Like we are a bucket of pondwater where the layers have settled down, and you pick it up and shake it, and when it settles down, the scum is still on top and the gravel is still on the bottom. So this social structure. Nice and exclusive. Each little clique talks to its own little clique and watches the same shows and hugs the same teddybears and dates a generic boyfriend, who wears a generic shirt, and also generic undies, which he will duly display above his generic jeans. Or I may be referring to only the Ballerina-Flats Clique. You know the ones, yes?

"Do you watch Friends? OMFG wasn't Joey so cute, there, where he pulled the same stupid face he's pulled for ten seasons and paused for just the right amount of time and made a deep yet funny comment? OMFGROTFLMAO. LOOOOOOOL. OMG what did you say? You don't watch Friends? Like, how can you not watch Friends, like, where have you been, like, ew."

I am forever put off ballerina flats and white pants, I think.

Look out for them. They have horns and fangs. And straightening irons and hot wax.

I'm the quiet one in the corner, the one in the extra-large hoodie. The one who you know, instantly, is a NINJA.

*Dramatic closing music*

Oh Yay, Vitamin B tablets!

This is a hot, sticky night, cold desert nights are a myth. Suffocation, and the smell of vodka and pineapple juice is not leaving my tshirt. Hairs, too many hairs on my head and they are tired and dying moist, sweaty deaths on my neck, my itchy, salty neck, the one that I would like to cut off and cover carefully with a sheet of cellophane and store in the freezer for 3-4 hours. Allow to set and serve with whipped cream and a sprig of mint on top. 

This taste of salt is everywhere, and MY GOD, WILL EDDIE VEDDER SHUT UP NOW RIGHT NOW, iTunes, iTunes, pause! Pause pause PAUSE pause pause!!!!!!!! Oh no, it hangs, oh please don't hang my project is open like a bombay duck sliced into half on a cold dead slab like itself, but not a slab, a fish, adjust as per taste, and Crawford Market is a smelly, smelly place. Don't believe them when they say it's Historic, because what use is Historic when there is Smelly? They try to con you with that OO LOOK IT'S HISTORIC PLEASE OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND MAKE APPROPRIATE AWED NOISES at Agra too, but you just say I don't care if it's historic, I'm not going in there and two people are dead in there and there is no eternal love cos there's no bloody romance when you're bloody smelly. Being dead is secondary, or tertiary or even quaternary because you have saat janam anyway but I don't know what comes after quaternary or I would have said it. 

If Kurt Vonnegut wasn't an angry man I shall be disappointed with fate, because I Vonne Gut someone too, but I was not blessed with a name like that, was I? No. It would make everything so convenient, like who are you? i am Vonnegut and what do you want? i Vonne Gut.. that is hilarious, that is. LAUGH.

If I could do a keg stand, would it be worth it if I were teetotalled? No. I would have to be totalled. That just goes to show you not to aspire for things that are not within your grasp. ..Grasp is SUCH a satisfying word to say, like 'debilitating' and 'ridDONKulous', which is the way 'ridiculous' should be said, but it is MY way and if you say it like that without my permission I will shoot you with a Colt .22 cos I have no aim, and That Person says you don't need to have aim to shoot with a Colt .22. That other one said I'd suck at shooting too, but that's what they told Gandy before he put on his dishcloth and went to London to see the Queen. Pussy cat, pussy cat what did you do there? I executed my diplomatic responsibility, but that doesn't fucking rhyme now, does it? 

Anyway, that's not what they told Gandy, they told Gandy he SHOULD shoot but he said he didn't wanna. 

Happy birthday Gandy.

Oh your birthday was three days back. Oh shitttt.

Oh no, oh no, Vitamin B...